Care costs calculator — the bill nobody prices until it's urgent

Residential care averages around £57,000 a year today, nursing care £87,000 — and care costs inflate faster than prices generally, because care is mostly wages. This calculator compounds the bill to when you might actually need it, on the same cost figures and care-inflation assumption the Hundred Summers app's longevity scenarios charge. Your figures never leave your browser.

Why the numbers surprise everyone

Care is the largest unpriced liability in most retirement plans: it arrives late, lands fast (the typical residential stay follows a health event, not a plan) and compounds at wage inflation while your money compounds at market returns minus fees. A three-year residential stay starting in twenty years costs more than £400,000 on these assumptions — and the means test asks whether your assets cover it before the state contributes a pound.

Pricing it is not the same as fearing it: most people never need nursing care, average stays are short, and the right response is usually a plan that could absorb the cost rather than insurance against it (pre-funded care insurance barely exists in the UK; immediate-needs annuities are bought at the point of need). The full Hundred Summers plan treats care as a scenario: your entire plan re-projected with these costs in your final years, funded and taxed from your real accounts — so you see whether the plan survives, not just the size of the bill. The care home fees guide walks the funding system in full.